SMITE Closed Beta Patch – Hel Reborn

In its latest patch to SMITE, Hi-Rez Studios has completely reevaluated the role of Hel. Previously, a core support character capable of healing or damage, the norse Goddess of the Underworld will be more viable in a solo position thanks to the new patch. Hel’s abilities have been completely rebuilt, offering more utility and disable in her core damage stance. In the light stand, Hel can now offer a token amount of damage from select abilities while simultaneously healing herself.

In other godly changes, He Bo and Agni have seen small buffs, including making Agni’s combos easier to trigger. Bastet also has a further reduced respawn time thanks to her Nine Lives passive.

Hi-Rez continues to refine other background elements, including further tweaks to the matchmaking process. Of note, is the addition of a ten-second window to accept a game invitation. This will eliminate accidental deserter buffs when someone is alt-tabbed, bio, etc. Hi-Rez stated that the company has overhauled the End of Match Lobby presentation, but expects it to continually change until launch.

Hit the jump for the full patch notes for v0.1.920.0. Let us know what you think about a buff to He Bo in the comments and be sure to check out our ongoing lore column SMITE: Demigods, Deities & Gods Explained.

General:

New Match Invite process

When a suitable match of players has been found, a new screen pops up for the 10 players that says Accept and Decline. As soon as all of the players have accepted the invite, the match launches everyone into the match lobby. If someone does not accept the invite, the match is cancelled and everyone else is requeued with a higher priority.

If someone accepts the match invite and then leaves the match lobby, they will gain a debuff and be unable to play a match for a specified amount of time.

Note that aspects of this process are still being tweaked and the UI is not in its final intended state.

New Party panel in the game lobby that shows the players that you are in a party with. Note that aspects of this process are still being tweaked and the UI is not in its final intended state.

Level up FX are now playing correctly when a player gains a level.

Big Ass Fury has been changed to Gold Fury. Both are very descriptive of the Fury but Gold Fury might be better received.

Hit pulse abilities for multiple gods have been tweaked to deliver the correct number of hits.

Gold treatment applied to any player when they gain crowd control immunity.

There are no longer 2 different 5v5 queues. Additional match making logic has been added to improve matches with everyone joining a single queue (new players and experienced players).

End of Match Lobby:

This scene is undergoing redesign so expect frequent changes. The scene is far from its expected final state.

Removed VIP line from favor calculation.

Wins and Losses were changed to Total Wins and Total Losses to be more clear that those are player totals and not totals for the specific god.

God name was moved to the top center of the scene.

Settings:

Two new settings options:

Disable the blue targeting arrow.

Showing friends notifications.

Several sliders in the settings menu have had improvements made.

Hud:

Buffs and debuffs are larger. The stacks and timers have had their size increased as well.

Stack counters of 1 will no longer show the number on the buff/debuff icon.

Death Recap prompt moved to the bottom of the hud instead of the top.

Known Issue: Skills are showing the upgrade effect on the skill bar at all times.

Item Store:

New Item

Rod of Will

This is a magical protection based item that gives additional protection to crowd control abilities.

Added new passives to the store purchased ability list.

Passive Speed

This item gives you a passive 10% movement speed boost.

Passive Crowd Control Reduction

This item gives you a passive 30% reduction to crowd control durations.

Passive Gold and XP Gain

This item gives you a passive 10% bonus to XP and Gold gained from kills.

Passive Respawn Reduction

This item gives you a passive 25% reduction to your respawn time.

Practice Map:

Phoenix and Minotaur strength has been reduced.

XP and gold rewards for minions has been increased by 50% in the practice map.

Gods:

Agni

Noxious Fumes

Tweaks to make the stun combo easier to perform.

Reduced the cooldown from 15s to 12s.

Flame Wave

Cooldown changed from 14s to decreasing cooldowns per rank, 15/14/13/12/11s.

Arachne

Drain Life

Description has been changed to indicate the silence on her enemies.

Bastet

Passive – Nine Lives

Reduced respawn time modified from 15% to 25%.

He Bo

Water Cannon

Increased the base damage per rank from 80/130/180/230/280 to 100/160/220/280/340.

Hel

Hel has had significant changes to make her more viable in both stances and less reliant on filling a true “support” role.

Dark Stance

Decay

This new ability fires a projectile that detonates on hit, doing damage to all nearby enemies.

Hinder

This new ability is a ground target aoe that slows enemies while also reducing their magical protection.

Repulse

This ability has had its damage increased significantly but no longer slows or knocks enemies back.

Light Stance

Restoration

This new ability fires a projectile that does damage to a single enemy and heals Hel for 50% of the damage done.

Cleanse

This new ability is a ground target that removes all crowd control on allies instantly and protects them from future ones for a limited time.

1 Comment

i really enjoy on the hel changes, how you took out half of her cc which was only 2 not so great skills to begin with. so melee champs just rape her without her being even a challenge. and while your looking at my comment, you should really change how experience gets laid out, having someone on my team insist on going jungler then getting stuck with the 1v2 lane, i really dont like being double ulted before i even reach lvl 5